


Housesitting for the (Probably) Dead

by alchemise



Category: Daredevil (TV), The Defenders (Marvel TV)
Genre: Friendship, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Happy Ending, Reunions
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-13
Updated: 2018-07-13
Packaged: 2019-06-01 17:31:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,335
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15148247
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/alchemise/pseuds/alchemise
Summary: Foggy kept stopping by Matt's apartment.





	Housesitting for the (Probably) Dead

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Crait](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Crait/gifts).



> Takes place in between The Defenders and Jessica Jones season 2.
> 
> Thanks to misbegotten for the beta!

Foggy kept stopping by Matt's apartment.

It started the day after Matt vanished. Foggy couldn't say "died" yet; there was still some sliver of hope left that this was all temporary. Matt was just "missing," while emergency workers combed through the rubble of Midland Circle searching for survivors.

Foggy went to Matt's apartment because he couldn't stand hanging around behind the police tape any longer waiting for news. There was a commotion every time they found a body. And every time it wasn't Matt.

Foggy found himself at Matt's apartment without really thinking about it. Even after everything that had gone down between them, he still had a spare key. He brought in Matt's mail and left it in a neat pile on the coffee table. He straightened some of the case notes Matt had lying around: clients Foggy had passed on to him to keep him busy—too busy to have time to go out at night and live his other life. He'd tried so hard to keep Matt safe. Until, of course, the day before when Foggy had made a different choice and brought Matt his devil suit (just one last time).

All the guilt and grief came crashing down on top of him, and Foggy fell onto Matt's couch, sobbing. That was the moment he felt any hope left slip away.

\-----

A few days later was Matt's "funeral." Foggy and Karen were alone at Matt's church, the rest of the city ignorant to the fact that they were only alive thanks to the Devil of Hell's Kitchen and his allies.

Afterwards, Foggy left Karen to mourn in her own way—she was still stubbornly clinging to hope—and wandered the city aimlessly. He wasn't terribly surprised, though, when his feet took him back to Matt's apartment.

He was all cried out this time but still fell asleep on Matt's couch again.

He woke in the middle of the night, to the glare of the billboard across the street shining through the window. Foggy wondered if he should install some curtains.

\-----

Four days later, Foggy showed up at Matt's apartment with curtains. They were a pleasant dark green and designed to block out light. He spent the morning installing them in all the windows, until he was satisfied that if he, or anyone else who could see, slept there again, they at least wouldn’t wake up with that awful neon glare attacking their eyeballs.

When he finished, he looked around the apartment assessing his handiwork. There were still two blemishes: crooked artwork and a crack running down the kitchen wall.

Foggy had noticed the crooked paintings before; he'd just figured it was in bad taste to point out to a blind man that his frames were all askew. After he'd learned of Matt's abilities, Foggy assumed Matt knew how they looked and just didn't bother to straighten anything. Now Foggy wondered if it was deliberate or just a lack of caring for such mundane details in Matt's life.

With an annoyed snort, he walked through the apartment and leveled off all the artwork. 

The last item was the crack in the wall. Foggy couldn't quite remember when it had first appeared. Probably during the earthquakes the Hand caused. He spent the afternoon watching YouTube videos on repairing cracks in brick. The next day—after spending a night in sound sleep on the couch in newly installed darkness—Foggy returned from the hardware store armed with mortar and a bunch of tools. Realistically, he knew this was a job that should go to a professional, but he was loathe to invite a stranger in to make repairs. Foggy wanted to do it himself. These were all things Matt hadn't cared enough about to have fixed. That has always bugged Foggy. Not the appearance of things cracked or in disarray, but that a cracked wall was the kind of normal, ordinary problem you were just supposed to deal with. Foggy would have loved Matt to handle all the normal, ordinary problems of life, instead of focusing so much on (and sacrificing himself to) the extraordinary. With Matt gone now, the least Foggy could do was to do this for him—fix his ordinary problems. So he loaded up a bunch of DIY videos on YouTube and patched the wall the best he could.

Satisfied that he hadn't made the wall less stable than when he started, Foggy cleaned everything up and looked at all the changes he'd made in satisfaction.

\-----

The next week found Foggy a few days into the next month and the realization that Matt's rent was past due. He couldn't bear to let Matt's apartment go, not yet anyway. It seemed to him too much like a final goodbye. He figured he would just eat the expense for a while. It was worth it to hold on to this piece of Matt.

Foggy tracked down the building's landlord and launched into a prepared spiel about a personal crisis that had taken Matt away for an indefinite amount of time, but with placating reassurances that the rent would continue to be paid. It turned out he needn't have bothered; the landlord neither wanted to evict his blind tenant nor fight to rent a unit with such an annoying lighting flaw. He was also more than happy to accept the promises of a lawyer working with as prestigious a firm as Hogarth, Chao & Benowitz, instead of one who seemed to mostly work pro bono.

Foggy walked back into Matt's apartment feeling a little strange. Technically, it was now his apartment, for as long as he continued paying for it. It was like he was renting a memory of Matt's life. Foggy found himself okay with this arrangement.

\-----

It was nearly two weeks before he could return to Matt's apartment (he'd been buried under an avalanche at work—a metaphor that made him visibly flinch every time it popped into his head). As Foggy walked through the door, he realized someone else was already there. For the briefest of moments, he felt a pang of hope: that somehow, someway it was Matt.

Instead, he found Jessica Jones rummaging through boxes of Matt's client files.

"All these all in Braille?" she asked without even looking at him.

Foggy regained control of his expectations and responded, "Um yeah, that's kind of how he did things. What with being blind."

Jessica brought a pile of files over to the couch, where she already had various folders and papers spread out. "I just figured with his superpowers and all, maybe he could just read normal paper."

"It didn't work that way." Foggy was concerned about what Jessica was up to and sat down opposite her. "If the paper was embossed enough he probably could have made out words, but it's not like he could hear or feel a photo. Where'd you get those anyway? And what are you even doing here?"

Jessica grimaced (Foggy thought, uncharitably, that it was probably her usual expression). She spoke in short bursts, giving away as little as possible. "I have a case. It used to be one of his. I thought he might have found something I haven't."

Foggy waited, not wanting to put her on the defensive. 

Jessica continued. "There's a girl. She was tossed around the system. Parents dead. Series of shitty foster families. Now she's eighteen and trying to get custody of her little brother. The state's being a dick, of course." She shrugged, faking a lack of concern that he didn't buy.

"I remember that case; I gave it to Matt. One of Hogarth's cast-offs. I thought maybe he'd identify with the girl, what with." He stopped dead, suddenly not wanting to disclose too much of Matt's personal life to Jessica. Matt had only known her a few days; he deserved some privacy.

Jessica snorted. "Yeah, I know. Dead dad, mom fucked off to who knows where. Another orphan. Like that's special or something."

Foggy realized the same thing he'd hoped would draw Matt to the case had snagged Jessica instead. "You too?"

"Whatever." Jessica again clearly faked apathy and quickly changed the subject. "Did Murdock take notes?"

"Sure, on his computer." Foggy looked around for the laptop and found it lying forgotten on a chair in Matt's bedroom. "I don't know his password though."

Jessica held her hand out for the computer. "I'll figure it out."

Foggy hesitated. "Look, I don't know what he had on here. There could be private stuff."

"I'm not going to go digging through his porn collection. I don't care. I'm just trying to help my client. _His_ client too, remember?" She kept her hand out, expectantly.

Foggy handed the computer over, a bit reluctantly. Jessica took it and left, without a goodbye, leaving Foggy surrounded by the scattered Braille printouts.

He started to clean up the mess she'd left behind. Throwing away some trash in the kitchen, he found that Jessica had raided Matt's liquor collection. Foggy sighed, annoyed at how little she seemed to even care that Matt was gone. Then he noticed she'd poured two glasses, both sitting on the counter. One clearly for herself, and empty, but the other with a couple fingers of cheap whiskey left in it. He thought it was a toast, maybe. To an absent friend? Or colleague? Or whatever they had been in those few days they'd fought side by side to save the city.

Foggy left the glass with the whiskey sitting there. He didn't feel right just dumping it out.

\-----

The next week, Foggy and Karen met up one evening at Josie's. He hadn't seen her since the funeral at Matt's church. They both made excuses about being busy with work, but as the drinks piled on and the mood turned melancholy, it was obvious they'd been avoiding each other because it still hurt too much. Which Foggy thought was ridiculous, because he'd missed her and couldn't take losing her friendship as well in so short a time.

He turned his newly emptied shot glass over and slammed it down on the bar emphatically. Or tried to anyway; instead he hit the rim and it went a bit wobbly before he could right it. The look Josie gave him killed whatever grand speech he'd intended to make. Instead he turned a bit sheepishly to Karen and said, "Let's get out of here. Drinking here clearly isn't doing us any good. And, um, I want to show you something." She looked at him quizzically but followed him out of the bar.

Foggy led them to Matt's apartment. Karen made a soft noise—like a sigh that would have been a sob if there was more energy behind it—when she realized where they were going and linked her arm in Foggy's.

When they entered the apartment, Karen walked through looking at the state of it: clean, tidy, repaired, and curtains on the windows. "What did you do, Foggy?"

"I don't know. I just thought someone should look after it. For Matt." He shrugged, suddenly unsure how to articulate why he kept coming back there.

Karen smiled, a bit sadly. "It's wonderful. Really." Then she spotted the kitchen counter. "But why is there a glass of whiskey sitting there?"

"It's Matt's. Seems a shame to drink without him."

She laughed in response and raided the liquor stash to pour them both another drink.

They toasted, "To Matt," as they clinked their glasses together, spilling a bit on the floor.

The two of them woke the following morning, awkwardly sprawled out across the furniture and feeling awful, but vowed to meet up the next month and do it again.

\-----

The next time Foggy went by the apartment, it was just to unwind after a long week at work. The place was becoming like a sanctuary for him—away from the bustle of the law firm, the guilt or innocence of clients, the desperate attempt to maintain his integrity at a job he and Matt had vowed they'd do for the right reasons.

Foggy grabbed the small stack of mail that had accumulated for Matt and brought it upstairs to sort through, thinking about the cold beer he had waiting for him in the fridge and the possibilities of ordering some pizza for dinner.

He was through the door and stepping around the corner into the living area before he realized someone else was there.

"Hi, Foggy."

 _Matt_.

The world froze as he took in the sight before him—that one word echoing through his head. _Matt_.

Matt was standing next to the couch, like he had been there waiting for Foggy to see him. Of course, he'd probably known who was approaching from the moment Foggy entered the building.

Matt stood a bit awkwardly. Foggy thought he was holding himself carefully, as though in remembered pain. Foggy had no clue what kind of damage dropping a building on someone did to them and had tried his best the past few months to not think about it. Matt's hair was mussed as usual, and he clearly hadn't shaved in a while. He looked thin too, like maybe he'd lost some muscle mass in his recovery. But he was alive, and for Foggy, everything else stopped mattering: all his anger at Matt choosing to live a life of danger and violence, all the guilt and regret for Foggy's own role in Matt going out that last time. All of it gone, with just Matt and Foggy left, standing in the apartment.

The moment broke, and the mail Foggy had been holding slipped from his hands. He breathed out Matt's name at little more than a whisper and launched himself across the few steps between them to wrap Matt into a hug. Matt returned it, holding Foggy tightly.

As they pulled apart, a series of questions flashed through Foggy's mind, but just as quickly they faded away, unasked. All that mattered was that Matt was alive and home.


End file.
